ANALYSIS: The NSPM-7 memorandum transforms political opposition into terrorism in the United States

Introduction: When Washington redefines terrorism to silence its opponents

A text signed in the shadows, with titanic consequences

On September 25, 2025, Donald Trump quietly signed the National Security Presidential Memorandum number 7, soberly titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. A presentable title, almost banal. Except that behind this polished formulation lies one of the most authoritarian moves undertaken by an American administration in decades. This memorandum does not create new crimes. It does something worse: it gives federal agencies — FBI, IRS, DOJ, DHS — the latitude to deploy existing counterterrorism tools against anyone expressing views deemed "anti-American," "anti-capitalist," or "anti-Christian."

This is not dystopian fiction. This is American public policy in 2025–2026. And its effects are being felt: union organizers, a religion professor, anti-ICE community organizers have already been indicted under what the Joint Task Force Vanguard — the armed wing of NSPM-7 — calls its national mission. On June 16, 2026, 15 protesters from Minnesota appeared before a federal court, their actions — attending meetings, posting on Facebook, distributing leaflets — characterized as acts constituting a terrorist conspiracy.

The architecture of power without legal precedent

What makes NSPM-7 particularly insidious is its legal architecture — or rather, its absence. The Brennan Center for Justice concluded that this memorandum is "without basis in fact or in law." It cites no statutory provision, no constitutional foundation. The American president has no legal authority to designate domestic organizations as terrorist — unlike foreign organizations, for which a legal procedure exists. But Trump acted as if this authority were his, and his agencies followed.

Unlike an executive order, which can be challenged in court, a national security memorandum is often classified or semi-classified, guiding law enforcement and military agencies in the shadows. NSPM-7 was not classified — but its instructions are of a formidable precision: investigate, disrupt, prosecute. Monitor funding. Interrogate prior to any judicial procedure. Create a cash rewards system for informants.

The text of the memorandum: what it actually says

"Indicators" that describe millions of Americans

NSPM-7 identifies "common threads" supposedly uniting violent activists. These indicators include: anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity; support for "overthrowing the government"; extremism on issues of migration, race, and gender; and "hostility toward those who uphold traditional American values on family, religion, and morality." According to the ACLU and the Brennan Center, these categories potentially describe tens of millions of American citizens — union organizers, socialists, libertarians, pro-immigration advocates, LGBTQ+ activists, environmental activists, Christians critical of the evangelical church, opponents of immigration policy.

The memorandum goes even further in its legal absurdity: it classifies criminal trespass — a simple property violation, usually a minor offense — among "politically motivated terrorist acts." Journalist Ken Klippenstein, who has extensively documented NSPM-7, noted that this classification allows any ordinary arrest at a demonstration to be transformed into a terrorism file, with all the resulting criminal consequences: enhanced sentences, increased surveillance, blacklisting.

The full apparatus of state mobilized

What distinguishes NSPM-7 from previous counterterrorism directives is the scale of mobilization it imposes. Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) — partnerships between the FBI and local law enforcement — receive a mandate to investigate individuals and organizations, but also their funders, the leaders and employees of NGOs, and American citizens with foreign ties potentially violating the FARA foreign agents law. The Treasury Department and the IRS are mobilized to trace financial flows. Banks are encouraged to file suspicious activity reports. A retrospective review of all activism files over the past five years has been ordered.

In April 2026, the federal budget revealed that the FBI had created the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center, bringing together staff from ten federal agencies, with a budget of 12.5 billion dollars. This center is tasked with identifying and prosecuting targets defined not by their violent acts, but by their ideas. Its creation represents an unprecedented institutionalization of ideological surveillance within the American security apparatus.

The semantic drift: how one word becomes a weapon

The word "terrorism" and its historical slippage

The word terrorism has a history. It was coined to designate acts of organized violence aimed at creating terror in the civilian population for political purposes. Bombings, targeted assassinations, hostage-takings — that is terrorism in its original and most universally recognized sense. The PATRIOT Act of 2001, adopted in the post-9/11 emergency, broadened this domestic definition to include any act dangerous to human life, violating federal or state laws, and aimed at intimidating a civilian population or influencing government policy through coercion. An already broad definition — but one that maintained the essential criterion of danger to human life and coercive intent.

NSPM-7 goes a step further by associating with these legal criteria a list of ideologies and beliefs that have, in themselves, no violent character whatsoever. Being anti-capitalist is not a crime. Being hostile to "traditional American values" is not a crime. Criticizing immigration policy is not a crime. But by listing them as "indicators" of domestic terrorism, the Trump administration creates a continuum between opinion and violence that does not exist in law, but now exists in the practice of federal agencies.

The analogy with McCarthyism: a comparison that imposes itself

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich was among the first to raise the alarm on NSPM-7, in October 2025, noting that its accusatory language — "un-American," "anti-capitalist" — is directly borrowed from the McCarthyite vocabulary. McCarthy used these same terms to destroy careers, pursue innocents, and spread fear in the American public sphere. The difference? McCarthy did not have the FBI, IRS, DOJ, and DHS acting in concert within a Joint Mission Center endowed with twelve billion dollars and tasked with compiling lists of suspect organizations.

The parallel is all the more striking because Miles Taylor, former DHS chief of staff, called NSPM-7 "Orwellian beyond belief." Journalist Fred Kaplan estimated that Trump was "laying the foundations of a police state." These warnings do not come from far-left activists, but from former Republican officials and centrist commentators. When the American political center begins using the vocabulary of authoritarianism to describe its own government, something fundamental is breaking down.

The targeted groups: a broader spectrum than announced

From union organizers to university professors, including donors

The Brennan Center for Justice has compiled a concrete list of groups potentially targeted by NSPM-7 based on a strict reading of the text: union organizers, socialists, many libertarians, those who criticize institutional Christianity, pro-immigration groups, anti-ICE activists, racial justice advocates and transgender rights activists — and anyone making statements the administration deems "un-American." This spectrum is extraordinarily broad. It covers a significant portion of the American political spectrum, far beyond the extremist fringe that might actually engage in violence.

The June 16, 2026 indictments in Minnesota illustrate this reality strikingly. Among the 15 defendants: Erik Davis, professor of religious studies at Macalester College. His "terrorist acts"? Attending meetings. Posting on social media. Forming peaceful human barriers in front of a building used by ICE. David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute — not a bastion of the radical left — found in the 94-page indictment only one documented act of violence against a federal agent. The rest? "A series of fundamentally non-criminal incidents, with some minor offenses, virtually all being acts of non-violent civil disobedience."

NGOs and donors in the IRS crosshairs

NSPM-7 does not stop at activists in the street. It also targets the American associative fabric as a whole. The IRS has been ordered to investigate nonprofit organizations that directly or indirectly fund political violence or domestic terrorism — terms whose elastic definition we now understand. Banks are invited to flag suspicious transactions. Senior officials and employees of NGOs can be personally targeted. Donors — individuals or foundations — fall within the scope of investigation.

In October 2025, Reuters revealed that the Trump administration had targeted a list of organizations including the Open Society Foundations of George Soros, Blue — the Democratic Party's funding arm, Indivisible, pro-Palestinian Jewish organizations like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as pro-immigration coalitions. This list perfectly illustrates the political, rather than security-oriented, nature of the enterprise: it does not include networks of armed violence, but ordinary components of American civil society.

Freedom of expression under pressure: concrete and documented effects

FBI visits that silence before any indictment

The most formidable effect of NSPM-7 may not be the number of indictments — still relatively limited — but the chilling effect it produces on ordinary civic participation. In October 2025, FBI agents began showing up at the homes of people who had participated in peaceful demonstrations. One documented example from Raw Story: a citizen received a visit from agents who told him his name had been mentioned in connection with a June demonstration. Before leaving, the agents noted that this might not be their last meeting. The result? That citizen stopped participating in subsequent demonstrations.

Ken Klippenstein — the journalist who has most thoroughly documented NSPM-7 — stressed that this is exactly the intended effect: to create a diffuse fear that leads citizens to self-censor before any indictment is even necessary. The mere threat of being placed on an FBI watchlist, with the consequences for employment, housing, bank credit, and foreign travel, is sufficient to discourage democratic participation. It is a mechanism of economic and social repression that requires no prison cells — at least initially.

The press and journalists in the crosshairs

The context of NSPM-7 coincides with increased pressure on the media and journalists. On January 18, 2026, Don Lemon — a former CNN anchor — was arrested after covering a demonstration against ICE operations at a church in Minnesota. Search warrants were sought against him and another journalist, Georgia Fort. A federal judge refused these warrants twice, reprimanding prosecutors for failing to meet basic legal criteria. The Guardian documented this episode in May 2026 as revealing a strategy of intimidating media covering anti-immigration protests.

Earlier, in January 2026, the Pentagon had introduced a media access policy that a federal court deemed unconstitutional, blocking it following a complaint from the New York Times. These episodes are not isolated. They form a pattern consistent with the spirit of NSPM-7: defining critical journalism as a potential threat to "national security," and using available tools to discourage it. The space for independent journalism, peaceful dissent, and civil disobedience narrows as prosecutions accumulate.

The absence of a legal basis: a paper architecture with steel teeth

No standalone domestic terrorism crime exists in American law

One of the most striking points in the analysis of NSPM-7 is this fundamental legal reality: domestic terrorism is not a standalone crime under American law. The PATRIOT Act defines domestic terrorism, but this definition serves as an investigative framework — not as a basis for criminal prosecution. There is no charge called "domestic terrorism" in the federal penal code. To prosecute, attorneys must use existing offenses — conspiracy, assault on a federal agent, property destruction, obstruction of law enforcement.

What NSPM-7 does within this framework is particularly devious: it uses the terrorist label as a pretext for investigation to identify a target population — defined by its ideas, not its acts — then looks, among that population, for existing offenses to prosecute with maximum severity. As Ken Klippenstein explained in a June 2026 interview: "NSPM-7 tells the feds who to watch. Then they look for the crime." This is the inversion of the fundamental republican principle that a crime must precede an investigation, not the reverse.

Attorney General Bondi amplifies the arsenal

On December 4, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi published an operational memorandum that transforms NSPM-7 into a doctrine of action for the entire DOJ. This text — analyzed in detail by the law firm Arnold & Porter — goes even further: it orders a retrospective review of all political activism files over the past five years, instructs the FBI to create and update every 30 days a list of domestic terrorist organizations, creates a cash rewards system for informants, and requires each federal prosecutor's office to designate a "district coordinator" responsible for NSPM-7 cases.

Bondi also expanded the operational definition of domestic terrorism to include "organized doxing of law enforcement," "mass riots," and "violent efforts to impede the enforcement of immigration laws." Each of these terms is sufficiently vague to encompass acts of civil disobedience, social media posts identifying ICE agents, or demonstrations outside detention centers. The law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler noted that the Bondi memorandum targets those who "adhere to extreme views on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment" — legitimate political positions, not criminal acts.

The first indictments: NSPM-7 in judicial action

From Prairieland to Minneapolis: the pattern confirms itself

In March 2026, eight protesters at the Prairieland ICE detention center in Texas were convicted of material support for terrorism — the first terrorism conviction linked to presumed Antifa members in American history. This judicial victory for the Trump administration was presented as a validation of the NSPM-7 approach. Then, in June 2026, the cases multiplied: two Stop Cop City activists in Atlanta indicted on June 12; about fifteen anti-ICE organizers from Minnesota indicted on June 16; eight pro-Palestine activists from the University of Michigan also linked to the NSPM-7 framework.

What stands out, when reading these indictments, is their content. For the Minnesota organizers, among the "overt acts" of the alleged terrorist conspiracy are: attending meetings, posting on Facebook, distributing leaflets, organizing after-action reviews. Cameron Kennedy is cited for a Facebook post: "We need to become ungovernable." Three words on a social network. Isaac Auman Sant is being prosecuted for causing "substantial emotional distress" to a federal agent. These charges, in a counterterrorism context, carry sentences potentially exceeding 20 years in prison.

The response of institutions: judges who resist

Not all branches of power are bending. Federal Judge William Young of Boston — appointed by Ronald Reagan — described the Trump administration as "authoritarian" and blocked measures targeting foreign pro-Palestinian academics, finding their constitutional rights had been violated. District Judge John Docherty refused search warrants against journalists twice, reprimanding prosecutors for their failure to meet basic legal criteria. A federal court blocked the Pentagon press policy. An appeals court expressed serious reservations about sanctions against Senator Mark Kelly for public statements critical of the administration.

These judicial resistances are encouraging. They show that the American system of checks and balances is not dead. But they have their limits: they do not neutralize the chilling effect of ongoing investigations, watchlists, and FBI home visits. The damage is partially done even when indictments are dismissed. Preventive intimidation works independently of the final verdict.

The administration's strategy: redefining the domestic enemy

Stephen Miller and the doctrine of "violence on a continuum"

Behind NSPM-7 is Stephen Miller, senior White House advisor and principal architect of immigration and domestic security policy. According to Reuters, Miller plays a "hands-on" role in evaluating NGO investigations, receives regular updates from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and coordinates recommendations between the DOJ, IRS, and Treasury. It is Miller who has publicly articulated the doctrine that demonstrations marked by violent incidents constitute a "continuum of violence" representing a broader conspiracy — a rhetorical construction that allows any peaceful protester to be associated with violent acts committed by others, potentially years earlier or miles away.

This "continuum" doctrine is philosophically and legally fragile, but politically effective. It allows a disparate coalition of opponents — anti-ICE activists, civil rights defenders, unions, progressive NGOs — to be treated as a unified conspiratorial network, without having to demonstrate direct links between its members. It is the same reasoning that, during McCarthyism, allowed the American left to be presented as a Soviet fifth column: vague enough to be irrefutable, precise enough to appear credible.

The Gorka strategy and the May 2026 "counter-terrorism strategy"

In May 2026, the White House published a new national counter-terrorism strategy that lists "violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists" as a major terrorist threat, alongside Islamist groups and drug cartels. This strategy, whose influence of adviser Sebastian Gorka is evident, invokes the specter of a "Red-Green alliance" between the far left and Islamists, warns against "political assassinations of Christians and conservatives" attributed to these groups, and explicitly targets pro-Palestinian organizations.

The ideological construction is coherent, even if the facts contradict it: according to DOJ data — which the administration quietly removed from its website — right-wing extremists are responsible for a far greater share of politically motivated violence in the United States than their left-wing counterparts. But the suppression of that data is part of the enterprise: one cannot question the narrative if the contradicting data has been erased.

The response of civil society: the alarm sounded from left and right

More than 3,000 NGOs and 30 members of Congress

The response to NSPM-7 was swift and broad. By September 30, 2025, more than 3,000 non-governmental organizations had signed an open letter opposing the directive. In October 2025, more than 30 members of Congress — Democrats and a few Republicans — addressed a letter to Trump raising constitutional and civil liberties concerns. Representative Ro Khanna described NSPM-7 as "one of the most dangerous power grabs" by Trump, adding: "The goal is to silence people and groups by threatening retaliation."

The ACLU published a detailed legal analysis concluding that the memorandum gives the administration permission to pursue individuals and organizations for their political views. Human Rights Watch condemned the directive, with its acting executive director Federico Borello declaring: "President Trump's order mobilizing federal forces to investigate perceived opponents of his administration turns reality on its head." The National Coalition Against Censorship called it "a blueprint for allowing law enforcement to cast a wide net in the name of terrorism, but it is undeniable that it targets political opponents."

The resistance of states and governors

The institutional counter-reaction does not stop at the federal level. Oregon's Attorney General filed a suit against Trump, Pete Hegseth, and other federal officials in response to the deployment of the National Guard in Portland under the NSPM-7 pretext. Civil rights defense organizations developed protective measures that governors and state attorneys general can adopt to protect their citizens, NGOs, and electoral workers from NSPM-7 investigations. Robert Reich, in a June 2026 text, called on governors to adopt these protections, and on Congress to refuse to fund the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center — whose 12.5-billion-dollar budget is under review.

More than a 300% increase in domestic terrorism investigations, according to the Congressional testimony of FBI Director Kash Patel. Thousands of American citizens and NGOs now reportedly placed on a secret watchlist linked to the Joint Mission Center, according to former Attorney General Pam Bondi. These figures outline the contours of a mass surveillance infrastructure whose precise dimensions remain partially classified — which is, in itself, a major democratic problem.

Trump as "necessary evil": the limits of a conditional defense

What Trump got right

Intellectual honesty requires acknowledging this. The Trump administration is right on one fundamental point: real political violence is unacceptable, whatever cause invokes it. The assassination of Charlie Kirk — an abominable act — and attacks against federal agents deserve a firm response from the rule of law. Organized doxing of police officers, Molotov cocktail attacks on vehicles, physical assaults on political opponents: these acts fall squarely in the criminal domain and must be prosecuted. A liberal democracy that does not defend itself against political violence condemns itself. To that extent, the administration's stated desire to energetically prosecute organized violence — from whatever quarter it comes — is legitimate.

Trump was also right to point out that some demonstrations were exploited by radical elements willing to use violence, and that some associative networks may have facilitated, intentionally or not, illegal activities. A democracy has the right to investigate those networks. It has the right to use its fiscal and judicial tools to dismantle the financing of criminal activities. These principles are sound. The problem is not in NSPM-7's stated objective, but in the means it deploys and the total absence of safeguards against abuse.

What makes NSPM-7 fundamentally unacceptable

The problem is that NSPM-7 does not limit itself to prosecuting violence. It extends the terrorist label to opinions, beliefs, and peaceful activities. It targets individuals on the basis of their ideology, not their acts. It mobilizes the state's fiscal and security apparatus against ordinary components of civil society — unions, NGOs, opposition parties, philanthropic foundations. It suppresses scientific data that contradicts its narrative. It creates a paid informant system. It orders five-year retrospective reviews. It does all this without explicit legal basis, without adequate judicial oversight, and without democratic oversight mechanisms.

This is where Trump ceases to be a necessary evil and becomes a direct threat to the institutions he claims to defend. A democracy that uses counterterrorism tools against its own political opponents is no longer truly a democracy. It may still have the forms — elections, courts, a free press — but its substance has evaporated. The Trump administration faces real challenges: networks that organize violence, destabilized borders, foreign adversaries. These are legitimate problems that call for legitimate responses. NSPM-7 is not one.

The precedent for Western democracies: a global alarm signal

What Europe must take from NSPM-7

NSPM-7 does not concern only Americans. It sends a signal to the entire democratic world. If the world's foremost democracy can legally redefine political opposition as terrorism — even without a solid legal basis, even against the advice of its own judicial institutions — this logic can migrate. It can seduce governments in Central and Eastern Europe that look to Washington to validate their own authoritarian tendencies. It can provide a rhetorical model to semi-democratic regimes seeking to muzzle their opposition without striking it directly.

The European Union, which struggles daily to maintain the rule of law in Hungary, Poland, or Slovakia, finds itself in a weaker position when the American model it is supposed to promote itself adopts authoritarian practices. The normative credibility of the West — its capacity to defend liberal democracy as a universal model — is directly affected by what is happening in Washington. This is not an American crisis. It is a Western crisis.

The risk of escalation and the repressive spiral

The history of authoritarian states shows that the redefinition of terrorism as a tool of political control never stops on its own. Once an infrastructure is in place — watchlists, paid informants, retrospective file reviews, inter-agency joint mission centers — it has its own logic of expansion. Targets widen. Criteria loosen. Today's opponents prefigure tomorrow's political prisoners. This is not inevitable: American institutions have shown remarkable resilience. But the window to stop this drift closes with every new indictment, every new memorandum, every new expansion of the NSPM-7 framework.

Robert Reich warned in June 2026 that Congress must reassert its authority over emergency powers and the deployment of the military on American soil. Governors must adopt protective measures for citizens and NGOs. Civil liberties lawyers are preparing defense strategies. These counter-powers exist. They are engaged. But they cannot function in silence. The role of the free press, columnists, intellectuals, academics — throughout the West — is to name what is happening and refuse the normalization of the unacceptable.

The constitutional question: what legal scholars say

A memorandum with no legal anchor

On a purely constitutional level, NSPM-7 is legally problematic from beginning to end. The Brennan Center noted that the text cites no statute or constitutional provision to justify the president's authority to act in this way. It invokes the PATRIOT Act's domestic terrorism definition as if it constituted a legal basis, when it only authorizes investigations, not designations of organizations as terrorist. It gives the Attorney General the power to recommend designations of terrorist organizations — a power entirely without basis in any statute.

The ACLU stressed that any attempt to legislate on the basis of ideologies — even violent ones — faces major constitutional obstacles under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has historically protected the freedom of association "to advance beliefs and ideas," and has imposed strict constraints on the government's ability to punish even speech advocating illegal actions. The memorandum deliberately conflates violent acts and protected ideological positions — a legally contestable but politically effective short-term technique.

"Material support" extended beyond legal limits

One of the most dangerous extensions of NSPM-7 concerns the concept of "material support for terrorism" — a serious offense defined under federal law. Under existing law, material support must be provided in connection with one of the federal offenses specifically listed in the terrorism code. The memorandum asks agencies to investigate material support for "all illegal operations" — a massive extension of the legal criterion, without going through Congress. This would theoretically allow prosecution of someone who provided water at a legal demonstration if a participant later committed a minor offense. This is not a theoretical extrapolation: the ACLU explicitly cited this example.

The notion of "radicalization" is also problematic: the memorandum lists it as a target behavior, yet the Brennan Center has noted that it is not only non-criminal — it is not even illegal in any form under American law. Investigating "radicalization" amounts to investigating thought and discourse. That is the very definition of political control that the First Amendment is supposed to prohibit.

The surveillance arsenal: blacklists, watchlists, and databases

The concrete effects of being placed on a watchlist

Being placed on a federal watchlist under NSPM-7 is not merely a symbolic sanction. The consequences are immediate and practical. According to the Brennan Center, targeted individuals face invasive interrogations and searches at every trip, preventive stops by law enforcement, obstacles in accessing banking and financial services, and possible loss of employment or housing if the investigation becomes public. And the FBI's domestic terrorism list — which counted approximately 5,000 American citizens in September 2025 — is actively growing since the deployment of NSPM-7.

In March 2026, the FBI and IRS formed a joint task force to investigate nonprofit organizations suspected of ties to domestic terrorism. In April 2026, FBI emails obtained by Zeteo showed the Bureau training state and local law enforcement in NSPM-7 provisions — thus multiplying the number of officers capable of opening investigations. Each layer of this architecture — watchlists, trainings, retrospective reviews, paid informants, shared databases — reinforces and expands the original apparatus.

Social media as a vector of surveillance

The administration's 2027 budget, obtained and analyzed by Ken Klippenstein in April 2026, describes social media and encrypted communications as tools used by "domestic terrorists" to recruit and plan. This description places in NSPM-7's crosshairs not only activities on social networks, but potentially the private messaging tools used by millions of ordinary Americans. The explicit reference to encrypted communications as a terrorist vector is a troubling signal regarding the administration's surveillance ambitions.

Combined with the informant rewards system — which encourages relatives, colleagues, and neighbors to report suspicious activities — this digital surveillance can create an environment of generalized mistrust within activist communities and beyond. Representative Ro Khanna described NSPM-7 as "one of the most dangerous power grabs" by Trump precisely because it does not merely punish acts: it aims to pre-empt dissenting thought before it becomes action.

Conclusion: Naming the drift in order to better combat it

What history will make of NSPM-7

The history of democracies confronted with authoritarian temptation knows this moment: the one in which a government, emboldened by an electoral majority, a real or manufactured security crisis, and an appetite for control, crosses the line between legitimate self-defense and political repression. NSPM-7 represents that moment for the United States in 2025–2026. Its effects are already documented: activists, professors, union organizers, journalists indicted or intimidated not for acts of violence, but for their ideas, their presence at demonstrations, their online posts. NGOs under fiscal surveillance. Scientific data suppressed. An inter-agency surveillance infrastructure endowed with billions of dollars.

Defending the West means defending its fundamental values — freedom of expression, the right to opposition, the presumption of innocence, judicial independence. It does not mean defending any particular government, administration, or president. When the West ceases to be faithful to its own principles, it loses the moral legitimacy that underpins its role in the world. NSPM-7 is not only a threat to Americans. It is a threat to the Western model itself.

What we can and must do

Resistance is possible and it is underway. American courts have blocked several administration measures. Judges appointed by Republican presidents have found its actions unconstitutional. Civil liberties organizations — the ACLU, the Brennan Center, Human Rights Watch — are documenting, litigating, and winning legal battles. Governors and state attorneys general are preparing legal shields. Congress can refuse to fund the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center. All of this matters.

But institutional resistance is not enough without civic resistance: refusing normalization, naming the unacceptable, keeping alive the memory of what liberal democracy requires of its institutions. Columnists, journalists, intellectuals, academics, ordinary citizens throughout the West have an irreplaceable role in this process. Not by excusing political violence — never. But by refusing that the fight against violence serve as a pretext for the destruction of fundamental freedoms. That is the line NSPM-7 has crossed. And that is the line that must be defended.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Sources

Primary sources

Official text of NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence — White House, September 25, 2025

Trump's war on the left: Inside the plan to investigate liberal groups — Reuters, October 9, 2025

'Major Escalation': Trump Prosecutor Invokes NSPM-7 While Unveiling Charges Against 15 ICE Protesters — Common Dreams, June 17, 2026

Secondary sources

Trump's Version of "Domestic Terrorism" vs. the First Amendment — Brennan Center for Justice, February 13, 2026

How NSPM-7 Seeks to Use "Domestic Terrorism" to Target Nonprofits and Activists — ACLU, October 15, 2025

'Flying under the radar': Ex-Cabinet member Robert Reich sounds alarm on Trump's NSPM-7 — Raw Story, October 27, 2025

DOJ charges two Cop City protestors under NSPM-7 task force initiative — Atlanta Press Collective, June 12, 2026

NSPM-7 — Wikipedia, encyclopedic analysis and complete timeline, updated 2026